“The most important thing you should know about me?” Hannah Grae ponders aloud. “I will probably write a song about you.” She laughs. “I can’t help but write about everyone I know.”
When she first began writing music, Hannah was more accustomed to telling stories not about herself, but about others. She’d always fancied herself as a performer, but after being rejected from drama school she shifted focus, giving herself a more unconventional, self-directed education by making music for her YouTube channel in lockdown. As well as recording herself playing covers, she wrote reinterpretations of existing songs based on suggestions her followers would send in, such as a new version of Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 mega-hit drivers license.
Hannah was far more reserved about exhuming her own feelings for the purpose of music. “I literally was never, ever vulnerable,” she admits. “I never spoke about my feelings to anyone. I just pushed them down and ignored them. The idea of writing a song that was about me, and the idea of playing it to people, was so scary.”